Sunday, October 31, 2010

ewwwwwwwwwe! I just saw a beautiful Halloween mani using a lovely pale shade as the base, and had bright blood red splatter-ey tips. It was really cool so I had to copy this for my Halloween manicure for the night! I used NYC Mulberry Street, and A NEW TO ME Billie polish called Ruby #08-2. ( - thats gotta be my next mani, it is a beautiful shimmery bright red -)

Also; here is the haunted mansion I made with old freeze-zee boxes, black construction paper and BBQ skewers..... This is a prototype for my Halloween village 2011, I hope to make a few coooooool Halloween houses similar to this, just 1/2 to 1/3 the size, which are lightweight and EASY TO STORE! This was super-duper fun to make, and I am hoping to whip up a bunch of these on my X-mas break. I hope to add a few construction photos to my P&P blog sometime this afternoon.

Friday, October 29, 2010

It's been a while since I added any new frankenpolish creations to my blog. Here are two fabulous green/gold-ish polish's I had made a few months ago. There is literally dozens of sheer opalescent and sheer polish's with strong flash, hiding at the walmart or other stores where discount polish can be found. For me - I am not really into sheer girly colors worn alone. And so the few sheer polsih's I have are usually layered over a strong base, such as black or dark navy blues.

Some of these sheer polish's though, are far too milky to be a great layering polish. My solution to this is to add black ~ Just straight up black creme polish. I am happy to report that these always turn out to be lovely frankenpolish's♥

First up; a polish I made with an older Billie polish I found in a discount store. It is a terrible milky lite blue with frosty golden micro-shimmer. It is not sheer enough to layer, due to the white milky base, and it is too fugly for me to be worn alone as there is major streaking and brush marks.

I just added black and some clear Viola- a lovely golden olive polish that looks great at 3 thin coats. There is a flaw in this small mini bottle, either in the cap or the threads of the actual bottle. And so some of the chemicals in this franken creation evaporated, leaving crusty bits of polish *inside* the bottle. = which left small crusty bits of polish on my nails! = OOPS! I hope to re-create this in a proper bottle. I like this shade and will definitely wear it again ( minus the crusty bits ). These little bottle's that I use also have quite a stiff brush, and so I always get brush marks - no matter how fabulous my franken polish is.

If you have a hankering to make some of these dark golden olive green franken's = look for a sheer polish with a golden flash; Golden flash plus black creme equals awesome dark olive golden polish

Golden base/ Golden flash + Black = Dark golden olive green

Stuff I used, Billie Ice, WnW Black, SH Clear and the franken - which I called 'Leprechaun 1'

Here it is compared to OPI AYQAC -

this is my go-to polish for comparing dark golden greenish polish's

Leprechaun 1 @ 3 coats with TC

My second franken utilizing a 'too milky & fugly for me' polish was made with Maybelline Express Finish Green So Sheen. I have a lot of sheer green polish like this, It's like up until the last year or so, drug-stores and department store polish only had sheer green polish. None of the major companies thought of releasing an opaque green ( in my part of the land, anyway). Whats up with that?

Monday, October 25, 2010

This, by far, is my favirote Halloween nail art this year, I have already done this look with a green base HERE, but I had to do it with this beautiful fluorescent purple as the base. I tried to create girl-ish lips; for a lady Frankenstein' but it did not work out.

With a dotting tool, this is super duper easy to do. HERE is the link to the video where I first found this. I did not apply TC in my photos, I find that I am getting too much reflection and it distorts the nail art, making it hard to take photos.

For this look I used Billie Electric Purple; 3 coats, and Wet n' Wild Black, and Billie French White..... along with my trusty dotting tool I found in the Scrapbook section of my fav dollar store in my town.

Billie Electric Purple 3 coats

My middle nail, Billie Purple haze is a straight up florescent purple, while Purple Rain, and Electric Purple have slight shimmer to them and are much more opaque.

Purple Rain on the left has a golden shimmer, while Electric Purple on the right has a silver-ish shimmer. These were all 3 coats and dried super-duper fast.

Sunday, October 24, 2010

Sally Hansen Dark Chocolate is a very rich deep brown polish with subtle copper micro-shimmer. Here is 2 coats with 2 copper-ish Stripe Rite polish's and some cool copper hex glitter from a floral embellishment from my MOM. It's really hard to find any type of larger HEX glitter in these parts, I love large hex glitter for crafts but I rarely see it for sale anywhere.....

These Stripe Rite polish's are awesome! They can be found at Sally Beauty supply, and are so easy to use. I have already done a 'look' with these recently but wanted to play with them again.

Here is my mani for the day, along with some free-hand Candy Corn nails I did earlier in the week.

.... okay, its not that bad, but the Orange bled through the white portion, THAT NYC ORANGE is insanly bright! I will definitly layer it over white some day - I think it can hold it's own against some of the popular bright orange neon polish's out there.

Saturday, October 23, 2010

I think once you get going on a swatch-a-thon, it's not so bad. I have painted and removed polish from my nails at least 50 times in the last week. Anytime I removed polish and washed my hands I applied a moisturizer around my cuticles and under my nails with a small angled brush before I started painting =and i have no frazzle. I also made sure I applied moisturizer around my nails and let it sink in before I began to take off my polish.

That is my normal routine..... a few extra steps but sooooooo worth it. If you decide to not apply moisturizer around your cuticles before painting - to help with an easy clean-up - at least apply moisturizer around your cuticles ( and let it sink in ) before you begin to remove your polish. This has made a monumental difference in the dryness that sometimes occurs to my cuticles.

anyhoo - onto some fun photos.

Billie Blue; I have made some beautiful, beautiful frankens with this jelly-ish bright primary blue. Although it took 4 coats to get to this opacity, there is still some areas that are a little sparse. This dried to a matte finish and I had to use 2 coats of Nailene Acrylic Strong Top Coat to get it to shine..... 2 coats! most of the polish's I wear I only use 1 coat of TC - and this just sucked it all up - weird.

With gradient, This had a few bare spots even after 4 coats

Billie Blue Skies, thankfully gets totally opaque in 3 coats, two thick ones would do but there is some brush strokes visible so I try to do 3 thin, even coats. It has a lovely finish to it.... not sure what its called but without TC it has a nice almost satin sheen ( ? ) It has a touch of frosty-ness but I dont mind frosty finish's in this color family.

Billie Blue Skes - 3 coats below - no TC

With TC

Blue Skies gradient

Electric Blue is another sheer but lovely blue shade from this brand. It has a subtle pinkish flash, and has been great for layering. I wish it was a tad more opaque. This dried fast so I can't complain.

Electric Blue; 4 coats below - No TC

With TC

Electric Blue Gradient - needs 4 to 5 coats to opacity - this is very nice layered over many different polish's

and finally a quickie skittles. The first two polish's are older Billie Polish I found during my epic Ontario Canada polish haul. I have made 2 pretty frankens with these. The first on I called Paradox, I just added black and it turned out lovely.

Franken Paradox made with Billie Hyacinth

Although they are very nice shades, I cannot stand polish that are frosty looking and definitely cannot stand frosty polish's that are white-ish, or taupe-ish... so I will likely never wear these as a full mani.

Blueberry is a scented polish, it smells really good. Whenever I wear scented polish, or read about it I always wonder why they don't make ALL nail polish scented.

Below is line up off all the BLUE Billie Polish's I have, and have swatched here. I am hoping to work through my entire collection, as I have an obscene amount of polish's I haven't even cracked open yet